I think he's just really good at tearing apart someone's objection. It sort goes back to what I was saying, people often do just misunderstand his points. If you want some good examples for that, you don't need to look any further than within this thread. On the defensive aspect, I think he's a very good debater who knows how to point that out.

If he 'won', does this mean he has proven 'god's' existence? Why do you think he's called a 'christian' apologist?

No. You know I'm an atheist, why would you ask that? I told you that's not what it means. I just mean he does a better job at presenting his case than his opponent does at tearing it apart, or making their own case.

Though almost none of his main arguments are exclusively applicable to christianity, I do realize he's a heavily biased figure with his mind well made up.

I did ask for examples, since you keep claiming that people like Lawrence Krauss are too stupid to understand his arguments. Explain them then.

I wasn't the one who said Kraus was stupid. Well, I told you where you can find some examples of his argument being misunderstood - in fact, you're one of the people in this thread who have done it - so I think it goes to show a lot of what I mean. As far as explaining what his argument actually is and states, I have been.

Well, if I can paraphrase WC (Ha! Maybe there is a god.), his argument is that:
Everything that has a beginning, has a cause.
The universe had a beginning.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.

If something like the above is how you understand WC's take on the cosmological argument, it falls at the first hurdle. There is no logically necessary connection between 'beginning' and 'cause'. You can state it as a scientific hypothesis, and believe it all you will, but it is not a sound logical premise.

I think the first premise certainly is a sound premise...

Really? So what is the logical connection between 'beginning' and 'cause'?

...but I think what you're saying is that it's not a valid premise, and for something like this, there honestly may be no real difference. There are a few different reasons why craig believes the first premise holds true.

WLC wrote:The first one is, that it is a kind of first principle of metaphysics that something cannot come from nothing; out of nothing nothing comes.

Being "a kind of principle of metaphysics" doesn't make it true.

WLC wrote:Aristotle put it that being only arises from being, it doesn't come from non-being. And I think that this is a metaphysical truth that we do intuit rationally when we think about it.

As I said above; it is a scientific hypothesis. The fact that WLC wishes it were true to support his argument, has nothing to do with whether it is actually the case.

WLC wrote:Now I think that the questioner doesn't understand, perhaps, what philosophers mean when they talk about intuition. It's not like women's intuition, some sort of mysterious feeling or something; rather this would be a way of knowing some sort of a truth that is so basic, it's so primitive, that it is grasped as evidently true without needing to provide some deeper proof of it.

Good grief. With apologies to women, what Craig is describing is exactly like "women's intuition".

To find an ontological truth as foundational as abstract logical premises has been the dream of rationalists since Parmenides. His own 'Being is', is one of only two examples that fit the bill; the other is 'thinking is', which we can extract from Descartes. That this approach appeals to religious thinkers is precisely because it avoids the inconvenient fact that there is no empirical data that supports the intuition 'My god is real.'

WLC wrote:...it's not that you can prove it but it just seems evident.

Therefore, it isn't sound.

WLC wrote:And I would say in the same way when you think about the metaphysical principle that something cannot come from nothing, that seems to me to just be evidently true. And I don't think that this is idiosyncratic to me; on the contrary this is one of the oldest principles of metaphysics, Kevin, that has been recognized since the time of ancient Greek philosophy right up through the present day, so that I stand well within the mainstream of philosophical thought in saying this

That's an appeal to authority, which Craig, if he knows his logic, will recognise as a fallacy. But then, he hasn't anywhere else to go, since he admits "that seems to me to just be evidently true."

So when I say that there may well be no real difference between sound and valid in this case, is because craig believes it's true exactly because it seems intuitively true, likening the idea to how the law of thoughts are intuitively true.

It honestly doesn't matter to the argument if there was; He think it's impossible for something to be eternal in the traditional sense of having an infinite past, and that only a being could cause in timelessness. I explained why in my first post. If there was something before the big bang, the same thing is just posited for that.

Indeed, but that still doesn't prove 'Everything that has a beginning, has a cause'.

Funny. I always thought it takes all place in the subjective mind. If it was as simple as you say it is, consensus would be much easier

Well, I was careful to specify physics and cosmology. There is very little consensus on what constitutes 'science', but there is much broader agreement that physics, in it's day to day practise (what Kuhn called 'normal science'), is of necessity an instrumentalist endeavour.

Here we must distinguish between “theistic personalism” and “classical theism.” For a theistic personalist like Craig, God is a person like us; he's just far more powerful. For classical theists, God is transpersonal, not a person, nor does he have emotions like humans. God isn’t like us at all. A classical theist would reject a concept of God which views him as the sort of being who would come to our rescue when we’re in danger, for this wouldn’t be a changeless, eternal being. According to the classical theist, that would be sheer anthropomorphism.

I don't think he's trying to say our consciousness is an exact translation of what his is like, all that's being said is that god has some sort of free will. I think you'd agree with that.

Craig thinks of God as a being alongside other beings: God has consciousness. In classical theism, God is without parts: God is consciousness.

A classical theist does not hold that creatorship is an attribute of God. Instead, God is without part so creatorship is the aggregate of his acting nature. To say "God is love" is not to say God loves in the same sense people love one another.

What you're saying just sounds like a piece of poetry. It sounds pretty immaterial, because it's just the philosophical concept of an attribute, and we're not trying to say that god has a physical part of his body responsible for his free will, or anything like that.

LOL. This is a common mistake even after it is explicitly said that God is without parts -- without attributes.

For a classical theist, the second objection is moot. They'd say of course God does not have something known as "Existential Quantification."

It's not God that lacks existential quantification, but a characteristic in him they're positing for an argument they've created. Before you use a concept, you have to have a rough idea of what that concept means. To be clear, mere inconceivability isn't an issue, because we can't concieve of a hall of a million mirrors, yet we know something like that could exist. We know there are more than 2 dimensions, yet that's all we observe in. What those things have, however, are prior and disconjunctional examples by extrapolation. Timelessness, and more specifically spacelessness, doesn't make any sense in our minds as a concept itself.

That's kinda the point.

The point I'm trying to make is that to classical theists, the Kalam argument isn't important. No argument is. It's a matter of recognition/realization, not intellectual argument.

Last edited by Reflex on Wed Dec 13, 2017 3:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

It doesn’t. But don’t be fooled into thinking that faith is blind. This is from Fides et Ratio:

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit
rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the
human heart a desire to know the truth -- in a word, to know
himself -- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and
women may also come to the fullness of truth about
themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

I’m not Catholic, but there is truth to be found even in Andy Capp cartoons.

So you don't even have to think about it?

I want to think about it. But my conceptual interpretation is personal and completely unique.

The thing about any of these arguments is that in the end they prove nothing of use to those doing the "proofs". But the provers think they are actually proving something. Even if an argument worked, it would say nothing about what is actually meant by the word "god". It could be an advanced being, it could even be immortal, all the omni's, etc. and that would not in any way imply that this god was the one christians are refering to, or muslims, jews, etc. And even IF somehow it was proven to be the christian god, that god could easily have set things up whereby the so called sacred books are nothing but human inventions. It may have even allowed the humans to write in their books that the books were His and Only His words and yet not be. There's just no leg to stand on in any of these games.

The thing about any of these arguments is that in the end they prove nothing of use to those doing the "proofs". But the provers think they are actually proving something. Even if an argument worked, it would say nothing about what is actually meant by the word "god". It could be an advanced being, it could even be immortal, all the omni's, etc. and that would not in any way imply that this god was the one christians are refering to, or muslims, jews, etc. And even IF somehow it was proven to be the christian god, that god could easily have set things up whereby the so called sacred books are nothing but human inventions. It may have even allowed the humans to write in their books that the books were His and Only His words and yet not be. There's just no leg to stand on in any of these games.

Is that your rationalization and proof why arguments fail?

Proofs aren't proofs unless the exact meaning of the terms involved are defined in a way that all can agree. And the term "god" is one no one can define adequately so as not to be self-referencing, or to assume what was trying to be proven in the first place. Now lots of theologians tried they're darnedest to hide that fact by using fancy language. But in the end, just like 99% of your own posts, they're really just meaningless.

The thing about any of these arguments is that in the end they prove nothing of use to those doing the "proofs". But the provers think they are actually proving something. Even if an argument worked, it would say nothing about what is actually meant by the word "god". It could be an advanced being, it could even be immortal, all the omni's, etc. and that would not in any way imply that this god was the one christians are refering to, or muslims, jews, etc. And even IF somehow it was proven to be the christian god, that god could easily have set things up whereby the so called sacred books are nothing but human inventions. It may have even allowed the humans to write in their books that the books were His and Only His words and yet not be. There's just no leg to stand on in any of these games.

Is that your rationalization and proof why arguments fail?

Proofs aren't proofs unless the exact meaning of the terms involved are defined in a way that all can agree. So if I do not agree with you, you are not correct? Is a democracy how one finds truth then? What about the fallacy of authority then? Or if the democracy changes their minds.

What proof, or argument through a presentation of ordered dialectic, do you have to argue for this epistemological statement?

And the term "god" is one no one can define adequately so as not to be self-referencing, or to assume what was trying to be proven in the first place. Look up the "24 Definitions of God" on google, I posted it elsewhere a few times so I don't want to flood the forum with the same thing. Definitions of God can occur without infringing on his nature, while in a separate respect Gödel's incompleteness theorem's imply the act of definition is a continual process.

God as "logos" or "measurer", "divine plan", etc. does not contradict anything we can observe about God as the process of measurement can be observed as a process of self-reflection synonymous with the nature of God himself. I could expand upon this point further if you wish.

Now lots of theologians tried they're darnedest to hide that fact by using fancy language. But in the end, just like 99% of your own posts, they're really just meaningless.

"Fancy language" is in fact understood by fellow theologians, and relative to their specific groups they understand eachother just fine. I know, because I use to study with them.

Under you interpretation of "proof" does this mean, relative to their own group, they are in fact correct? If so is there a degree of truth in what they say. Or do all groups have to agree as "1" for truth to exist? If that is the case, are you completely wrong in everything you have ever said because at least "1" person disagrees with it?

I don't think what they or what I say are meaningless. In all truth, I just believe you are arrogant and poor at logic. You believe that if you do not understand something it is non-sense. But following that line of logic, if someone does not understand what you are saying or simply disagrees with it, then by default what you say is non-sense. In these respects, you have a standard of judgement which does more harm to you than any good.

In a separate respect, considering the few number of posts you seem to have accredited to you, does your lack or inability to answer other questions imply those are non-sense also?